Japanese girls who bathe with their fathers for longer are much more inclined to love them in later life, surveys suggest.

The survey quizzed Japanese on their bathing habits, and its findings regarding “papafuro” (“papa bath”) girls attracted particular attention.

Of those women who reported bathing with their father regularly as a child, 71.9% reported they “love their father,” as opposed to only 48.7% of those who never bathed with their father.

Children (of either sex) who reported bathing with their father until they were older also apparently enjoyed more involved relationships with their fathers – 44.2% of those who bathed with their father from ages 9 to 15 sought work related advice from their father in later life, as opposed to only 27.9% of those who only bathed until age 8 or less.

It is common for Japanese fathers to bathe with their adolescent daughters, although attitudes vary from those who consider it perfectly natural to those who think it a bit creepy – not least the misanthropic legions of 2ch:

“Westerners: ‘This is child abuse!'”

“One of my colleagues kept bathing with her father until she left high school. Honestly, I thought that was a bit creepy.”

“Bathe alone if you’re in elementary school!”

“At 15 I think it would be more of a problem for papa…”

“Papafuro… who makes up these phrases!?”

“I hear there are women in their twenties who still share toothbrushes with their fathers and families. Really it depends on the family.”

“There are a lot of people who are dependent on their fathers around, but you don’t hear nearly as much fuss about it as with those dependent on their mothers. Honestly, both are just as creepy.”

“If you somehow got an erection it would be extremely problematic so I’d never do it.”

“How would you explain that away?”

“So how old is too old for papafuro?”

“Generelly you’d stop once they started growing hair?”

“7’s the limit!”

“I bathed with my father until 13. I love and respect him.”

“I bathed with him until year 5 of elementary school I stopped when my hair and breasts started to grow, but I still bathe with mother even now.”

“My daughter refused to bathe with me starting at age 4 so I have no problems there…”

“You’d be arrested for doing it at any age in the USA. Cultural differences are scary stuff.”

“Tell a yank and you’d probably get beaten up.”

“Americans would just treat you as a pedophile and lock you up. I don’t know about other countries though.”

“My daughter is in the first year of middle school, we bathe together and share a bed. But she’s annoyed by lifting her skirt in the living room – you cannot understand the female mind.”

“Our daughter always picks papa when offered a choice between bathing with mama or papa… but she’s only 3.”

“Are there even any men out there who would be turned on by the sight of their own flesh and blood naked though?”

“This is just promoting incest and child abuse!”

“You lot would be grossed out by bathing with your mothers though, right?”

I love Japan more than any country. But I am going to view this the westerner side.

People claim that is apart of Japanese culture, but what if that culture has child “lover” undertone? I mean simple possession of Kiddy porn is still legal, the Lolicon industry is BOOMING and they constantly sexualize their child idols. And now they expect people to believe they aren’t bathing with their child just to see them nude or do something worse? WHAT LEVEL OF GODDAMN INSANITY ARE YOU AT?! You put 2 and 2 together and if you still don’t think it’s odd..well, you are full of shit.

Come on! Any sort of contact with your child would create a better bond between father and daughter. Chances are this is the only time they get with their kids when they’re not at work or at meal times…

I bathed with my father and male cousin until I was five. My sister until I was eleven. I see my mother and sister without cloths often. I am not uncomfortable being unclothed in front of any of those people, except my stepfather because he’d rather not see it. I bathe with my son, and he is four. My entire family grew up in a what used to be a small fishing village. It is a normal thing that many families still do. I’m sure I used to be quite common in all parts of the world. I have always completely understood the differences in male and female anatomy. I think it was nice to learn as I grew how different female bodies can look from each other, and what to expect. If the first thing that crosses your mind when you hear about families bathing is pedophilia, who is real creep? It’s good to be concerned for a child’s safety, but lets not be rude just because it isn’t something everybody can agree with.

If you can be nude in front of anyone, shouldn’t it be your own offspring? I mean… You were born without cloths and your parents washed you. When does it get weird, and why? Because other people/your parents say it isn’t right? Because you became uncomfortable? It got weird for me because nearly an entire classroom of six year old children thought it was disgusting. Obviously at that age they got the idea from someone else…

So, umm, just wondering…
How in the hell do they confirm this kind of stuff? Do they, like, take a hundred japanese father-daughter pairs, put them in a bathtub, and study them for a decade or so? I don’t get these surveys…

There’s nothing wrong with skin-ship. I wouldn’t do it with my daughter passed the age of 7 though. It is more for her sake than mine, I’m sure she wouldn’t want to see my wrinkly ass more than she has to.

All the people who comment that this is wrong, are the people who are so horny all the time, that they know they’d pop a boner bathing with their hawt teen daughter(s).
I know ’cause I sure as hell wouldn’t trust my horny self not to pop a boner.

I think its funny that here in the US freak out when they hear things like this and say that it should never happen at any age. Its practically getting to be such a balancing act between ok and not. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some that think once the kid is pushed out and able to crawl that they are on their own for fear of being considered pedophiles in some way.

You obviously live with your parents.
Electricity is much more expensive than hot water. And the Japanese bathing culture also uses the same water in any case. They’re just showering before they take a bath.

Anyone seen anime lately? Not sure that an anime exists in the past 6 years that didn’t include a bathing scene that turned out sexual somehow. Girls grabbing boobs, guys getting aroused when girls wash them, slips and falls onto naked bodies….Japan, you are lying to yourself. We all know you just want to bath with your naked daughters you creepy otaku.

Yeah, I hate my father because we didn’t bathe together. Seriously who comes up with this in Japan? I think the biggest problem between father and daughter is the father isn’t generally concerned about her future. It’s all about the man she can get so she will be something to society. They usually talk to their daughters as lowly and criticize their weight or skin. If fathers are worried about their daughters appreciating them when they are older then how about focusing on having happy little girls and giving them a childhood as long as possible.

I think cause and effect are flipped. ids who don’t want to bathe with their father as a kid tend to still have negative feelings as an adult. Likewise, kids who cling to their fathers tend to remain close.

If I have a daughter, I would train her to become Androphobic and a powerful puncher against men like the manga characters from Working! and MM!.

Reality
Me, my sister (1 year younger than me), and my cousin (5 years younger than me) bathed together since we were young until we reach high school.
I bathed with my mother until high school.
I slept with my sister, mother, and cousins in one room up until college.

Result
I dislike bathing/sharing a room with any guy even I’m a guy myself.
I love young little girls so much that I even spend a lot for them.

American bathing tubs are not built to hold more than one person, thus family (or even two people) bathing is not possible based on that alone, it’s not just based on “morality” or “culture differences”. Not everyone in America is alike. There is a common social action, just because there is routine.

((“Westerners: ‘This is child abuse!’”))

If you are forcing or physically abusing a child to do something they themselves are uncomfortable doing, then yes, that would be abusive.

((“You’d be arrested for doing it at any age in the USA. Cultural differences are scary stuff.”))

Incorrect
Bathing with or washing your child is not an offense. You have no idea how many advice columns and speakers try to explain not to leave your child in a bath tub full of water.

((“Americans would just treat you as a pedophile and lock you up. I don’t know about other countries though.”))

Incorrect
If your bathing a child (or anyone for that matter) for perverted reason to satisfy yourself, then that would be pedophilia.

I bathed with my mother until I was about 12, and still occasionally go to Bath houses with my father. It really depends on the environment, and how you view nudity. I know around here it is viewed as normal to bathe with elders, at least to a certain degree.

isn’t it more likely that the kids who already like their fathers would be more open to bathing with him? while those who dislike him refuse to bathe with him at an earlier age?

rather then bathing causing you to like or dislike him more?

Also I’m Canadian not American ,but it doesn’t seem *too* strange to me, i bathed with my parents when i was young (up to about 4/5) our bathtubs are smaller then thier anyways, theres no way you could fit a 10 year old kid and an adult in my bathtub.

It may be a good thing in private with young child or baby : as a father, sleep with a crybaby – 2 years old – don’t freak me out (parent’s duty : “no, there’s no dragon under your bed”) ; take a bath with my 2 year son ? No problem.

Take a bath in a south european country (around mediterranean sea) with your adolescent girl would like incest, pedophilia, child abuse. I’ll never do that.

It’s cultural : a “normal” french or spanish teenager don’t act like that with a father ; the mother may have a better place with menarche, puberty…

In Baltic countries (Norway/Finland/Sweden/Denmark/north Germany/Island), people may be more open on nudity or naturism, but i don’t think they’re exhibitionnist.

Id be mortified if my father EVER asked to take a bath with me. 😐 Like I’d want to see his old wiener. Ew. You guys saying it is no big deal: if you have a daughter then ask her regardless of age. :] I dare you. See what the hell she says. I bet it’ll be no. And then she will call you a pervert.

You would probably be mortified if I asked you to eat some creepy looking insect even through many insects are very nutritious and healthy, if not especially tasty. You are not used to bathing with your family which is why you would find it weird and uncomfortable. That’s exactly the opposite of what the article talks about.

I’m American and I can see this, I don’t know why others cannot. If you’re touching your children or vice versa for sexual pleasure then it’s incest! Is this so hard to understand? We’re all animals walking around with coverings. We’ve tabooed the natural state of our bodies to the point considering it evil to be naked. There are entire communities that live together, naked, and they’re not fucking their children. Nakedness is a state of being not a declaration of wanting to be fucked or looking for something to fuck. If we all washed together the world would be much better place to be in with less emphasis on how we look, removing those taboos that only hurt society, and a general raising of the level of acceptance of each other. We’re all humans: We live, we bathe, we die.

What are you bitching about? It was 2ch who assumed it was considered incest in the US, and most of the Americans here agree that if it’s a child then it isn’t incest while some people have various opinions (from all countries) about whether or not it is okay later in life.

Existing in temperate climate is not what the natural state of our bodies is meant for. Clothing plays such a major part of our culture because we need it to survive.

[quote]There are entire communities that live together, naked, and they’re not fucking their children.[/quote]
There are many such tribal communities in Africa. I doubt you will find any in Siberia.

[quote]If we all washed together the world would be much better place to be in with less emphasis on how we look, removing those taboos that only hurt society, and a general raising of the level of acceptance of each other.[/quote]
If we didn’t fight each other over every single thing we could the world would still be a lush forest and humans would still live in caves.

It’s not entirely unfounded. I remember there being a British study which basically said that bathing with your child when they’re young will make them more comfortable with the idea of telling you their problems when they’re older, especially if those problems concern puberty and sex.

Although i’m pretty sure it doesn’t make you LOVE them more, just that you’d feel less awkward about talking about personal things.

You people are a bunch of idiots. First pedophilia only aplies to prepubescent childrens not 15yo… Second, seeing someone from your family naked doesnt qualify as incest. Third, by your retarded logic it would mean that any nudist families are incestuous pedophiles? Gotta love the prude westerners… Lol

As a Westerner, I’m conditioned to think that adults bathing with their children after they hit puberty= pedophilia. But I’m trying to look at this from a different culture’s perspective, and I can indeed see why this would create bonds between parents and children.

However, when I was growing up my parents never with me (I think once I was old enough to learn how to wash myself and my mom was sure I wasn’t going to drown she left me alone); yes, I don’t have a very close relationship with my mother- she’s kinda cold and I can’t remember the last time she told me she loved me or was proud of me. However, that just made me form a close relationship with my father (who’s personality is more like mine and every time I see him he mentions how proud of me he is)

Hey, maybe there’s something to this bathing with parents if it helps you form bonds with them…

“As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia (or paedophilia) is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents (persons age 16 or older) typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

If a Parent sees nothing sexual in his pubescent Child (what should be the norm) where is the problem if they bath together or doing other non-sexual nudist things?

Yes, China is sooo smart that it overflows with exploding chairs, garbage pillows, trash filled trains, and let’s not forget cold hearted dipshits that run over toddlers multiple times while passerbys try their hardest to ignore the bleeding dying children.

Every country has geniuses and idiots, moron. The difference is that China is overflowing with the latter. You are among them.

Besides, who said anything about intelligence? Read again, dipshit. It says P-O-L-I-T-I-C-A-L and M-I-L-I-T-A-R-Y power. Guess what, fuckface? China rips off US military technology every chance it gets.

I remember reading an article that researched mothers who breast-fed their children even up until they were 10-12 years old. The research showed that the children who did this were more emotionally balanced and they had closer feelings for their mothers.

Combine this with bathing with father longer, and it kind of shows that modern parents “abandon” their children much sooner than they did in previous ages.

Ugh, flawed survey analysis. CORRELATION DOES NOT PROVE CAUSALITY… Srsly, it’s likely it’s not the act of bathing with your daughter but rather other factors in your relationship that permit you to bathe with your daughter that are affecting the love factor.

“Never do it in Europe”? Speak for yourself. If you didn’t do it, it doesn’t mean the rest of us didn’t do it. And what the hell is wrong with a bath? Are your minds really that corrupted by child abuse? Or are you just some random 12 year olds trying to talk big?

This sounds like a bad case of correlation implies causation. It sounds like to me that fathers that bathe with their kids probbably also happen to be more family oriented/involved in their kids lives and therefore enjoy better relationships.

That’s part of it, but there’s more to the causation than you think. Being at ease in such intimate circumstances cannot help but foster deep trust, and deep emotional bonding.

Sexual self-consciousness often begins a separation in parent / child relationships – especially that of father / daughter; their emotional bond is weakened.

It would make sense that the longer papafuro continues, the longer the emotional bond has to strengthen – especially important in the adolescent years. The result, then, is a deeper and stronger than average emotional bond.

Of course they made love to their fathers, theres no way he could keep his hands off of here after shes hot and covered in water oil, she infact becomes a different person in his mind. Also, this is very very old news, it was the main story item in Girl meets Girl with Hazamu’s dad from show 2 on pretty much.

my father always did my hair when i came out of the bath tube
and i was naked all the time until my hair was dry.
we never bathed together but when i see him (maybe 3 times a year) i only think about those stories, something in me is damaged since its really hard for me to get closer to males.

Doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s sad that so many can’t separate nudity from eroticism. Some people just can’t see bathing the same way as sitting at the dinner table with your family.

My only dispute with bathing with your parents well after the age where you can bath alone is hygienic. Dunno how dirty everyone else got when they were kids, but I have no shortage of memories of very dirty bathwater. Adding another human worth of dirt into the mix can’t be good for your health.

Before we say how pure holy and natural this is and admire the Japanese for it, and how Americans are disgusting for considering the possibility of child abuse…
Lets remember Japan is the creator of Lolicon, shotacon, toddlercon, loli hentai, incest manga, elementary girls selling their panties, 80% of their most successful industry anime is usually about schoolgirls typically with fanservice, “Cult Dentist & Wife Exorcise 13-Year-Old by Raping Her”, “80% Underage Schoolgirl Delivery Health Service Busted”, cosplay porn and ero cosplay of underaged characters, popularization of Lolita fashion, 2d ungeraged girlfriends and on pillows and sexy figurines, the inability to ask a school girl for directions xD, the reason most of you can’t look at little girls without a guilty conscience, ect ect and its all pretty normal there, underaged girls are like Gods in Japan…so..yeah.

hmm never bathed with mother or father lol but i did bath with my friend she seemed to like it though lol we did it till 13 :p grew up together :p though we kissed played with each other too :p bath time alone playing with water lol :p fond memories :p

Public preconception of activities is varied across different cultures and their different eras. It’s not just children affected, it could be, say, burglary concerns. Point is, some activities suffer after society ruins it for everyone in that age/area.

For example, wrestling dates back before humans as an instructional tool for raising young, yet the last couple of decades have made people uncomfortable watching men in tight clothing grapple. Even I’d feel awkward. A perfectly good sport, perhaps the FIRST “sport”, and we can’t enjoy it. Not because it changed, but because we did.

It depends on the term of `bathing` as we know the Japanese bathe in a totally different way to most of us in the west, and they treat it more of a tradition than just cleaning themselves, a more spiritual way if you like. Not like lying in a tub full of bubbles reading the newspaper. lol

The first thing that came to 2ch’s mind was pedophilia and incest. No one from the US actually commented on it until they said something. Are you that much of a sheep to think 2ch knows all about the US?

In time they are going to discover the difference between male and female.If you have a hot horney daughter you need to stop sooner or you mighjt find yurself into Incest like the Japanese who do it daily I’m told.

You’re using words you don’t understand, yourself. You shouldn’t do that… it’s bad for your health… you’ll grow scales, matted fur and horns as well as develop a hoarse and deeply raspy voice. Commonly called “Trollitis”.

Actually, you keep responding in spite of the futility, so I’m more than happy. You obviously care enough to write comment after comment. The internet might be massive, but this site isn’t, so I’m sure I’ll eviscerate your lame pussy ass again soon.

One of the great things about being me… Your pathetic trolling doesn’t bother me in the slightest. There is nothing you can say that would anger me, because you are a fleeting existence on the massive thing called Internet. Very soon, I will forget about this, and only you will be sad.

I remember a time when I was prob 5 that my mother was helping me shower. While I was just standing there being rinsed off, I was just swinging my arms randomly since I was bored. I hit my dick, then I continued to slap it back and forth which caused me to ask why it became hard. I didn’t stop slapping it while waiting for an answer and prob kept going until she put clothes on me lol. She stayed silent, and I left the bathroom with a boner equipped, like a boss.

How many women, backed up by the legal system, will at a drop of the hat then turn on their families and mates? This is the New World Order, they want us all apart, blowing in the wind, no culture save McCulture.

Till the Edo era, the public bath was mixed bathing. Children were living naked. They did not need privacy because, The range of a community was very wide. These lifestyles founded here and there in the history in the world.

It is from Meiji Era that consciousness of privacy is made. In Japan, the act which takes a bath with a child is a custom. Probably, father who takes a bath with the grown-up daughter does not have evil intentions.

I am somewhat skeptical in this report.
A father’s standing is low in a home. A father is disliked by the adolescent daughter at almost all homes, and he is depressed.
This is common to the world.

Not at all, sharing everyday basic-needs experiences (grooming, bathing, spa related activities, cooking, etc) does strengthen bonds between people. It’s all about spending time together in relaxing or comfortable situations. I personally don’t see anything bad with bathing with your parents; the problem that some people have is that there are deviants out there who are crazy AND have offspring and might take advantage of them, and that’s where fucked up laws and witch-hunt thinking starts to get nosy.

Those of you who seem to be implying that men can turn off sexual reactions to a womanly body just because it’s his daughter are either really stupid or really naive or both.

Even if a man doesn’t want to have sex with his daughter it is a natural physical reaction to get turned on by a young woman’s body. And regardless of intent that’s when things get inappropriate and they shouldn’t be bathing together. I doubt it will be good for a young woman’s psyche to know her dad gets a boner for her.

If it’s a child then it is FINE. Most Americans think it’s fine to bathe with your child. You’ll rarely find people in reality who disagree. The fact that all of you are thinking Americans find it incestuous because 2CH SAID SO are acting like ignorant, retarded sheep.

You won’t find many families embracing bathing together in the US, not because of nudity issues or pedophilia, but because the majority of bathtubs in the US aren’t made for it, and the majority of people in the US shower. Simple explanation that has nothing to do with pedophilia.

You are one dumb fucking twatface. Let’s just conveniently forget Japan’s incredibly “inventive” pornography industry and hentai culture, shall we? I mean, we can’t have logic stand in the way of your incredibly general statement about millions of Americans get in the way, can we?

Let’s also pay no mind to the fact that civilization has been obsessed with sex ever since the dawn of humanity. But only America is guilty of it – riiiight.

@6:33
It’s not the bathing together that carries a stigma, it’s the ages implied. A teenage girl should not be bathing with her father. Regardless of whether or not the man in the bath is her father, he’s still a man, and seeing a womanly form will have inappropriate results.

If we’re talking about children, then I see absolutely no problem with it.

But my biggest complaint about the comments is that people are assuming that the US is the one with the problem simply for not sharing a custom that other countries share. And then if we don’t do it a certain way there are all sorts of negative issues associated with it when the reality is that children in the US are expected to be independent at a young age, AND that bathing is usually seen as a way of getting clean rather than relaxing. It doesn’t mean that everyone associates bathing together with something perverted.

@04:15 I agree that Americans don’t necessarily need to change their bathing habits (in fact there are many ways of bonding and skinship besides bathing), but from the general feeling I get from the comments is that it’s a shame that in USA sharing a bath or bathing at all carries a perverted stigma when it really shouldn’t since it’s part of a daily grooming routine.

Everyone is trying to say that the US should do it because other countries do it. Just accept that other countries are different and move on. If you have problems being close with your family then there is more going on than the fact that you don’t bathe together.

IN Russia and other countries where they got some absurdly cold winters, there are some traditions about taking hot baths togherter…and Im saying just father,mother,son, daugher here, im sayign the whole damn family: cousins,aunts, grandparents and such…in some small communities they fgo even farther…nothing sexual about…

In countries with advanced sauna culture (Finland, and… err… Finland) it is quite common for families to bathe together regardless of age. Relatives aren’t usually thought of as things to put yer cock in around ‘ere and thus it is a non-issue.

If my sweet daughter NEEDED sex and came on to me I would teach her everythinng she needs to know,and satisfy her every way she wanted or needed me. It happens all over the world. Why get so up tight about what two people who love each other want from each other?

Oh no way in hell you deserve a downvote for that awesomeness! Someone here is just plain stupid.

As for the topic at hand… really I do wish we had this type of thing in our culture again. I don’t have any research on the subject, but I wonder if, since our public baths seem to have had their origins in Greco-Roman times, and because our public baths were shut down as AIDS hubs a few decades ago, that public bathing has just been demoted to being synonymous with perversion for our culture.

If we re-introduced it now, our generation wouldn’t be able to see it as non-sexual. It would take us spearheading the effort to bring it back to make it a normal thing a couple generations from now. In the interim, there would probably be a lot of sexual issues and misunderstandings caused by the practice probably, since being nude around one another in the US rarely has any other context than sex anymore.

All I know is family bonding is something every culture needs more of, no matter how it’s achieved. I have yet to meet another person who can say they love their family without some kind of “but…” following the statement.

Its skinship, and it does improve the parent-child relationship, extending towards mothers as well.

It doesn’t just have to be in the bath but in other activities as well such as sports and recreational stuff. What’s important is that parents actually spend time with their children, which I think many kids these days aren’t getting enough at a younger age.

And
>”Make Daughter Love You”
More like have a closer bond with parents, since I already love my mom and dad.

@Anyien
Probably because of the intimacy of it. From what I know, it’s common for Japanese families to bathe together and that builds intimacy through touch. Also it’s like setting aside time to hang out.

“i don’t know about Japan, but here….we have same culture with them….and we don’t think that’s gross. it’s you that have perverted mind”

I have a perverted mind about what? WTF are you talking about? Clearly perversion is on your mind, because I made no comment about bathing or perversion or anything of the sort. I only commented on the false “information” about Japanese families in general.

Obviously any daughter or son bathing with their father is going to have better relations because that means he is actually around. I’d be interested to know if those that didn’t bath and had lower feeling of their father; if their father just wasn’t around. ie: Working till 10pm waiting for 部長 to go home.

My wife is Japanese. We live in Japan. She bathed with daddy into her teens. He also fingered her in her bed a few nights a week until she was 11, and then moved on to her little sister (4-5 years younger). I have pretty strong opinions about the tradition of Japanese men bathing with their daughters.

First all “westerners” aren’t the same since a lot of different cultures (old and new) and ideas are mixing. And there’s a difference between the children of others and your own children, I think very few westerners would freak out if you bath with your children when they’re young (before their adolescence).

I would feel scared thinking the father is taken the opportunity of watching and touching her daughter naked and thinking of her in a sexual way (child abuse). She is her daughter!
But if not, if he is a good father and respects her little kid as his daughter and nothing more, not sexual, I think its ok, but until puberty, when the girl has to develop her sexual feelings about people and herself but not her dad…